--- title: The AI Gold Rush and the People Mining the Miners description: In the Klondike, the real money went to the people mining the miners. Brendan Howe on the AI gold rush and the hard work that actually pays off. image: https://blog.techify.ca/hubfs/AI%20Gold%20Rush_%20Prospectors%20and%20Sellers.png --- [Skip to content](https://blog.techify.ca/blog/the-ai-gold-rush-and-the-people-mining-the-miners#main-content) Oct 2, 2026, 2:25:19 PM # The AI Gold Rush and the People Mining the Miners ![Picture of Brendan Howe](https://blog.techify.ca/hs-fs/hubfs/Brendan.png?width=50&name=Brendan.png) [Brendan Howe](https://blog.techify.ca/blog/author/brendan-howe) Share: [linkedin-in icon](http://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=https://blog.techify.ca/blog/the-ai-gold-rush-and-the-people-mining-the-miners) The AI Gold Rush and the People Mining the Miners 3:28 *During the Klondike Gold Rush, most miners went home with nothing while the people selling to them got rich. Techify CEO Brendan Howe sees the same pattern in AI today, and explains what the real work of adoption takes.* \------ This summer I took my family up to the Yukon, to Dawson City. It's the home of the Klondike Gold Rush, which ran from about 1896 to 1899. Short window, enormous intensity. Roughly a hundred thousand people set out to get there and strike it rich. The route was treacherous. A lot of them died along the way. Most of the ones who made it never found the riches they'd imagined. The line you hear in Dawson is that the people who made the real money weren't the miners. They were the ones mining the miners. We're in an AI gold rush right now, and the same thing is happening. Every business owner I talk to is looking for the win, the jump forward, the thing that transforms the company. And there's no shortage of people happy to sell it to them. Be careful who you take advice from. A lot of newly minted AI consultants have appeared over the last eighteen months. In many cases they aren't technical. They don't have a change management background. They've never actually adopted AI at scale inside a real business, small, medium or large. If you're talking to someone who only wants to sell you a technical solution and has nothing to say about your people, walk away. [PwC's 2026 predictions](https://pwc.com/us/en/tech-effect/ai-analytics/ai-predictions.html) put a number on it. Technology delivers about 20% of an AI initiative's value. The other 80% comes from redesigning how the work gets done. That matches what we've lived through inside our own company. The excitement phase is over. Now it's the hard work. ### What the hard work looks like You identify the blockers standing between you and adoption, and you're honest about them. You build the foundation first: cybersecurity tightened up, an AI policy written, a success team named, and a real inventory of the manual, repetitive workflows AI could take off your team's plate. Then comes the part almost nobody sustains. Success team meetings that actually happen. Use case brainstorms. Mapping and documenting your workflows. Training. Workshops. Building a roadmap. Rolling out AI assistants, then AI agents. Failing at some of it. Working out why you failed. Fixing it. Then doing all of it again next month. That's the flywheel, and the discipline is what's hard. Not the technology. ### Nobody can outsource this The companies that do the hard work are the ones that will pull ahead. We're doing it inside Techify. And right now we're helping a lot of our clients do it inside their businesses. Let me be clear about the roles here: they're the ones doing the work. Nobody can outsource this. Our job is making sure they're not figuring it out alone and not wasting a year learning what we already learned the expensive way. We start with an AI Appraisal. It measures you against AI adoption best practices and shows you your opportunities, your risks, and the blockers you'll hit. Then we go from there. If you want help doing the hard work, let us know. [Find Your AI Blockers](https://techify.ca/appraisal/)   The people mining the miners will be fine either way. The question is whether you will be. Brendan Howe, CEO \--------- Techify helps organizations get more from the technology they already use. If your team wants to go deeper on AI, [get in touch.](http://www.techify.ca/appraisal)   [Data and AI](https://blog.techify.ca/blog/tag/data-and-ai), [Technology](https://blog.techify.ca/blog/tag/technology) [![logo\_techify2023](https://blog.techify.ca/hs-fs/hubfs/logo_techify2023.png?width=125&height=78&name=logo_techify2023.png "logo_techify2023")](https://techify.ca/) The only company that provides Proactive Technology, Cybersecurity and Productivity powered by Data and AI.  [Learn More](https://techify.ca/about/) ![CTGC\_2023\_Logo\_CMYK\_Eng](https://blog.techify.ca/hs-fs/hubfs/CTGC_2023_Logo_CMYK_Eng.png?width=200&height=98&name=CTGC_2023_Logo_CMYK_Eng.png "CTGC_2023_Logo_CMYK_Eng") ![FTC-Badge-Circle-Blue](https://blog.techify.ca/hs-fs/hubfs/FTC-Badge-Circle-Blue.png?width=115&height=115&name=FTC-Badge-Circle-Blue.png "FTC-Badge-Circle-Blue") Transform Your Tech from ANNOYING to AWESOME [Book A Meeting](https://meetings.hubspot.com/jbeldham?__hstc=183895097.ba07ed48dc1a272e3d99a6eb0eb1f930.1708005509024.1711375927031.1711378461880.62&__hssc=183895097.6.1711378461880&__hsfp=1613080986) Follow Us [Follow us on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/techifyyourit/) [Follow us on YouTube](http://www.youtube.com/@TechifyYourIT) ```json { "@context" : "https://schema.org", "@type" : "BlogPosting", "author" : { "@type" : "Person", "name" : "Brendan Howe", "url" : "https://blog.techify.ca/blog/author/brendan-howe" }, "dateModified" : "2026-10-02T18:25:29.168Z", "datePublished" : "2026-10-02T18:25:19.000Z", "headline" : "The AI Gold Rush and the People Mining the Miners", "image" : [ "https://blog.techify.ca/hubfs/AI%20Gold%20Rush_%20Prospectors%20and%20Sellers.png" ], "mainEntityOfPage" : { "@id" : "https://blog.techify.ca/blog/the-ai-gold-rush-and-the-people-mining-the-miners", "@type" : "WebPage" }, "publisher" : { "@type" : "Organization", "logo" : { "@type" : "ImageObject", "url" : "https://blog.techify.ca/hubfs/Techify%20Logo%20large-1.png" }, "name" : "Techify Inc." } } ```